Read a recipe like a guide like a prompt like a fucked up dialogue between two cookbook authors. Read it like the writing is on the wall. Read it drunk. And then refuse it like Rebecca May Johnson wrote in Small Fires. Let yourself be deterred, waylaid, and distracted by all your own shit. Read a recipe like a life.

Have you ever tried to do something right?

Me either. But I’ve tried to do some things less wrong. Occasionally, it worked. Occasionally, I’ve pulled off disorganized miracles in the kitchen, things I didn’t think were possible, things even my mom has enjoyed eating. My mom, who has a stack of cookbooks in her kitchen taller than her three tall children standing on each other’s shoulders. I wish I had cooked with her more often growing up. Maybe I wouldn’t be making these mistakes now.

Have you ever tried to cook something perfect?

Not technically perfect, but perfect in an idyllic sense, somewhere between nostalgia and naiveté? Something that lives in your mind only?

I’ve been lucky enough to travel the world and eat and make strong memories of food that I can’t easily shake. I’m lucky enough to be from Oakland, CA, where strong food memories grow on trees planted with seeds from every diaspora community you can imagine. I’m a taco snob, a bagel snob, a phở snob, and I hate whatever passes for injera outside Telegraph Avenue. Throwing straight gochujang on bad fried chicken doesn’t make it Korean, it makes you stupid, chef. And it hurts my feelings.

I am also a pretty bad cook. I love throwing stones in glass houses. I’m impatient, disorganized, and messy. I cook so much I should be better at it, but I’m not. I will often get an idea for a dish without knowing how to get there. Without taking into account local ingredients, limitations, or my own skillset.

When I lived in Sweden, my spoiled California-produce nostalgia manifested as culture shock. Where were all the heirloom tomatoes, the chile de árbol, the good tortillas? I used to rage against the El Paso sponsored ‘taco aisle’ that lives inside every Swedish grocery store. What the fuck do you mean this is the fucking best fucking salsa in the whole fucking country? Like I was Pesci in Goodfellas.

Eating out was worse. Migrants who open restaurants in Sweden have to change their recipes to pacify local tastes. This isn’t unique to Sweden, it happens the world over, but Swedish palates are some of the most sensitive I’ve ever encountered. At the burger spot where I worked, a customer complained that our signature ketchup was too spicy. The ingredient they were reacting to was black pepper.

Look, I know every ingredients can’t be sourced and local replacements should be used, I’m all for that, but what do you mean there’s no tripe in this phở? Sweden has cows, doesn’t it? Those cows have stomachs, don’t they?

I should have just given in, called it a day, and started cooking Swedish food. Things from the community. Dishes like cevapi, mezze, falafel, and kebab pizza. If I had tried, I could have learned something from my surroundings. Instead, I would just get angry that all the bagels around were simply round bread and not fucking bagels at all(!).

But you know what? If you can’t put up, shut up. The source of my anguish lies somewhere in the gulf between my terrible cooking skills and my desire for a global pantry. Currently, I am an American Swede living in Slovenia, craving Spanish tripe. Madrid-style tripe to be specific. Callos a la Madrileña to say its proper name. The least I can do is try.

So two weeks ago, I tried. It happened on a Saturday. On Saturdays we like to go to the farmers market, the butcher, the local bakery, and, you know, pretend to be upright citizens. It’s what you do in Ljubljana on a Saturday. You see your neighbours doing it. They see you too.

The butcher handed me a piece of tripe as soon as we walked in. Pre-cooked and bleached, the butcher said she eats them like candy. It tasted chewy, lovely, and bland. In need of any kind of sauce whatsoever. I would add it in near the end of the callos, so it doesn’t dissolve. We bought half a kilo. We also bought a small pig heart and two links of Slovenian blood sausage. Slovenian callos, I thought. Why not?

I think that was your soulmate, my girlfriend said as we left the butcher. She’s never seen two people get that excited about tripe.

At home, I got to work making something truly terrible. Something unrecognizable. Something only I could do. Instead of one callos recipe, I decided to read three and forge my own path. I knew this was the wrong way to do it, but I couldn’t be stopped. I’m just throwing things in a pot, right? I start most dishes by chopping onions and this was no exception. Onions are the base of everything good in life. And why not use the chorizo fat as the base? Slice those suckers up and throw them in with the onions. I bought some sweet peppers, though the recipe doesn’t call for them, it does call for Spanish paprika. Same shit, right? Then salt, pepper, some bay leaf…

The wheels fell off the dish before I got the car started. I don’t even drive like that. Seriously, I never got my license, I’m a bad American. My best friend pushed an old mustang in high school and I haven’t lived somewhere without decent public transit since I was eighteen.

Where I really fucked up was the krvavice; the blood sausage. In Slovenia they make these in winter, when a pig is slaughtered and the pieces are preserved for the cold season. The butcher told me these were the first of fall and therefore sweetest, kinda like how jamón made in January tastes the most like chestnuts. Ok, I thought, it’s not morcilla, but this could work.

It didn’t.

Krvavice is more delicate than Spanish blood sausage, it doesn’t have binders like rice or oat. So instead of holding its shape in the stew, it just… became the sauce.

I probably should have given up right then. But I couldn’t! I had spent 8 euros on ingredients! I had dinner to make! A storm was coming and this stew was supposed to be my sustenance for the weekend, while I stayed indoors and got shit done.

Have you ever put too much pressure on a dish? Have you ever decided a meal was going to change your life before you even took a bite?

The thing was fucked up already, so why not slice up the pig heart and throw it in the pot? The tripe too. I was in a fervor. Any sense of cooking time and desired texture was gone. I just had to save the dish, so the dish could save me.

After an hour more of cooking, the only discernible textures were mush, chorizo, heart, and ruin. The prospects of a delicious meal plummeted along with my self-worth. But I was still delusional. A little loopy. Maybe, just maybe, there was still something to be done. I could add a little heat? I did have a habanero in the fridge…

Never trust your gut. Always stick to the fucking recipe.

Callos a la Madrileña, if you’ve ever had it, is delicious. The tripe carries a distinct chewy texture, it’s unctuous, it’s comforting, with just the right balance of heat, fat, and paprika. This was not that. The tripe was barely decipherable in the muck here. The chorizo stuck out as the best part, I ate them first and stared at the rest.

The habanero scorched everything, leaving behind a smokey, spicy mess. In the end it was somewhere between bad callos, very bad menudo, and worse slop not fit for the pig whose heart I had wasted by cooking it. I ate it with bad grocery store flour tortillas, crying into the bowl. I ate it all, the whole pot to the face, over two days. It caused indigestion, it was not pleasant, but it did give me the idea for this story.

Two weeks ago I wanted to cook up something nice. This week I wanted to write something funny. It’s all related, isn’t it? Ingredients coming together in the right order to create the desired effect. Heat is applied, words are added like seasoning, structure is chopped and chiseled. Write a story like a mistake like a recipe like a big pot of nasty tripe.

At least here I can take ingredients out. At least here I can control the flame. At least I’m better at manipulating words than food, right?